Vignette. Recent remarks by Mani Shankar Aiyar [000B]
‘The bureaucrat-turned politician also said that he is called the “child of Macaulay” for speaking English, and questioned whether PM Modi knows Tamil’ (India, Never made casteist comment against Modi
).
Nor is Aiyar (An open letter to Shashi Tharoor on moral amnesia, and more
) sleeping particularly well.
- ‘I was shocked to the core by your answers to anchor Rajdeep Sardesai’s questions on India Today TV last night…I have been so disturbed that I could not sleep and have woken at 3 in the morning to write you this open letter.’
- ‘I have searhced my mind to find a basic reason for your unprincipled, amoral, and transactional approach to public policy…And the only reason I have been able to find is that you were born in 1956, 16 years after me, and, therefore, fell outside the ambit of the direct influence of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. THey were just names to you. For me, they were a living memory. When I was juts six, I was actually picked up…by Mahatma Gandhi who held us in his arms, a couple of weeks before his martyrdom…’
- ‘When it comes to secularism, I started having my doubts during a luncheon conversation with you several years ago. Then, I pored over your massive tome on patriotism and nationalism and critiqued it in an 8,000-word review in Open magazine.’